The Monetary System: What's Wrong and What Might Be Done

THE European money crisis only dramatized what many experts have long
regarded as an unassailable dictum: the free world's monetary system is
overdue for an overhaul. That systemthe internationally agreed basis
for exchanging one currency for anotherwas born 24 years ago in the
resort town of Bretton Woods, N.H. Imbued with a sense of wartime unity
and mindful that competitive currency devaluations had deepened and
prolonged the Depression of the '30s, the delegates from 45 nations
took only three weeks to devise the fundamentals.